ICT – Week 6 Reflection

Digital Fluency

A person’s digital fluency is dependent on what technologies, skills and knowledge that person requires to actively participate in their own digital world competently (Howell, 2012). For example if I am a young teen the skills I require to be digitally fluent would include; using a smart phone, instagramming, tweeting, facebooking and pinning, web browsing and basic word processing skills. This would be vastly different to a middle-aged professional who would probably use less mobile technologies and social media and more work focused programs, dependent on their field of work.

In saying this, how are we as teachers supposed to teach digital fluency, when it means something different for every person. The underlying answer is to meaningfully expose children to as many digital technologies as possible, whilst encouraging learning techniques such as trial and error, learning through play, and transferring knowledge from similar technologies (White, 2013). In the classroom this could include; blogging, web browsing, gaming, word processing, learning apps, music, video and movie skills.

White, G. K. (2013). Digital fluency: Skills necessary for learning in the digital age [article]. Retrieved from Australian Council for Educational Research from http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=digital_learning